


"Bunch of arseholes."

by HoransPayne



Series: NiamNetwork Themes [6]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoransPayne/pseuds/HoransPayne
Summary: Liam takes his little brother trick-or-treating on Halloween.





	

“Kyle, come on!” Liam called up the stairs. This was answered by the pattering feet of his little brother racing down. He jumped off the last two steps and landed before Liam. His huge grin was hidden by the mask he had on his face, but Liam knew it was there. 

“I’m ready!” He announced. Liam took a moment to take him in, scanning his costume. He had on a onsie coloured black and grey, with a yellow belt round his waist. His face was covered by a black mask with pointy ears poking up. It covered his whole head, hiding the hair that resembled his older brother’s. Liam grinned. He’d picked out the Batman costume for his little brother, and couldn’t deny how cute he looked in it. 

“Come on then.” Kyle grabbed an orange bucket that resembled a pumpkin off the bottom step, as Liam grabbed his house keys. The two then departed into the dark night.

 

As they walked down the pavement, Liam saw numbers of children in various costumes from Disney princesses, to zombies. He loved seeing such youthful joy, and hearing the laughter and excitement that came from knocking door to door and receiving handfuls of goodies. He loved how easily pleased children were, and he especially loved taking his little brother to experience it. He was a little miffed that his parents chose this weekend to go on holiday and leave him babysitting, meaning he had to miss his party, but seeing the way his brother’s face lit up when he bought him the Batman costume made it all better. 

Everything seemed perfect until around nine o’clock. Liam hadn’t meant to keep his brother out so late, but the boy was a bundle of energy and was practically racing from house to house. He had accidentally let his brother lead him to a neighbourhood that wasn’t as friendly as their own. Once realising his mistake, Liam tried to carefully guide his brother in the right direction without causing him any alarm. He wanted to make a swift return back to their own neighbourhood, for he knew some boys from his school lived here, and they were the type of boys Liam did his best to avoid. Although, most people were at the party, he’d overhead them talking about ditching it to stir up some trouble instead. Liam placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder to steer him across the road so he could change their direction. It was as they were waiting to cross that a car drove past, containing said boys Liam wanted to avoid. He turned his face downwards, looking at his brother, in the hopes that if they didn’t see his face they wouldn’t bother him. Thankfully for Liam, the car drove past without any qualms, and Liam led his brother across the road, in the same direction.

As they reached the end of the street, Liam felt a sudden rush of discomfort in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t sure of the cause, but he tightened his grip on the little hand he was now holding. When he crossed the seemingly empty road at the corner, his questions were answered. As he and Kyle began crossing, the lights of a car suddenly appeared from nowhere, and were coming straight towards them. Liam grabbed Kyle by both his shoulders and pulled him across the road, heart pounding. It was then that Liam turned, and saw the car had parked next to them; the very car he wanted to avoid. The passenger window rolled down as Liam was contemplating whether to just run or not. 

“Payne!” A voice shouted out of the car, followed by a chorus of laughter as Liam flinched at the voice. “No one teach you to look both ways before crossing?” The huddle of boys in the car began snickering at this poor attempt of humour, and Liam rolled his eyes before beginning to lead Kyle away. He frowned when he saw how much his little brother was shaking, clearly scared by the boys earlier attempt at running them over. Liam immediately regretted walking away when he felt a pain in the back of his head. The sharp pain was followed by a repulsive feeling of something cool and slimy sliding down his neck. When he turned round he saw one of the boys had climbed out of the car, an egg carton in one hand and a shit-eating grin on his face. He picked up another egg, and Liam winced in preparation, but was confused when nothing came. The small cry next to him answered any questions that may have come to his head. Kyle was rubbing his face, his bucket of sweets dropped and forgotten on the floor beside him. Liam saw red. At any other time Liam would’ve ran like a coward; ran home and locked himself in his room, and maybe even cried a little. Not this time. Liam stormed right up to the boy, fists clenched by his side, veins ready to burst out of his forehead. Maybe punching him in the nose wasn’t his greatest idea, but he wasn’t thinking clearly. His blood was boiling and he was furious. His hand had collided with the boy’s nose with a satisfying crunch, and Liam didn’t even wait to see him collapse to the floor before picking up his brother and running.

 

Liam had spent the whole walk back trying to console his frightened baby brother to no avail. The fact they’d left his sweets behind did nothing to appease matters. The cherry on top was arriving home to find his home splattered with egg and draped in toilet paper. Liam sighed. Of course he’d have to pay for possibly breaking the boy’s nose.   
After finally putting Kyle to bed and getting him to fall asleep with the promise of buying him all new sweets tomorrow, Liam thought he better on cleaning the house before his parents saw. He almost fell off the ladder he’d got out when the clearing of someone’s throat startled him. He was definitely more jumpy than usual tonight, for good reason. He gazed down upon a head of short blond hair. Liam wasn’t an expert, but he could tell it wasn’t the natural colour. He was met with glassy-looking blue eyes when he glanced at the boy’s face; ones he didn’t recognise. 

“Um, hi.” The boy started. “Are you – er – Payne?” Liam furrowed his thick brows.

“Yeah, I guess. Name’s Liam.” The boy gulped before starting again.

“I think this is yours.” He held up a little orange bucket, and Liam’s heart fluttered from relief. He almost fell off the ladder again, this time from trying to scramble down it so quickly.

“Oh my god! Thank you so much. My brother’s been devastated.” Liam questioned whether he should wake Kyle to show him, but thought against it. Waking him would only mean he’d get even less sleep; no doubt he’d be too overexcited. “How’d you know this was mine?” Liam didn’t like the way the boy was avoiding his eyes, guilt streaming through every pore.

“Um, I saw your brother drop it.” He shrugged, attempting to be nonchalant. 

“How’d you know where I live?” Liam took a slight step back, not trusting the boy any longer. He had such an angelic looking face; perfectly smooth skin, pink lips that contrasted his pale complexion, and bright blue eyes boring through Liam. He saw the boy gulp.

“Um-“

“Either tell me the truth or just go.” Liam’s impatience was growing, partly out of annoyance at the whole night. Another part was upset, because Liam had found himself slightly infatuated with the boy ever since he first saw him, but this boy was guilt-ridden for a reason.

“I was in that car earlier.” He was playing with the hem of his shirt and looking down, but Liam could see the redness growing on his neck and his face. “And um, I was with them lads when they did this to your house.”

“Oh, right.” Liam felt his heart sink. He turned away, not wanting to talk with the boy any longer.

“My name’s Niall!” He called after him. Liam sensed a little desperation in his voice so turned to face him once more.

“Good for you.” He folded his arms across his chest, bucket sweets hanging in one hand.

“I just moved here from Ireland.” That explained the accent and why Liam didn’t recognise him.

“Great.” The sarcasm wasn’t lost in Liam’s voice.

“I didn’t know anyone, but I heard about the party. Thought I’d go, see if I could meet anyone. I ran into that group of lads and we got chatting. They invited me out with them. I didn’t know what we were doing.”

“You had plenty chance to leave when they threw eggs at my little brother.” Liam put his hand through his hair, and ironically realised he’d forgotten to wash the egg out of it. It had now dried and felt disgusting. 

“I know. I guess I’m just a wimp.” He looked to the floor once more. “They all patted me on the back when I picked up the bucket. I think they thought I was doing it to stop you finding it later, or taking the sweets for meself for something.” Niall shrugged. “Bunch of arseholes.” Liam snorted at this.

“Don’t I know it.”

“You broke the guy’s nose, by the way.” Liam spotted a hint of a grin as the Irish lad said this. “Blood everywhere and it’s pretty wonky.”

“Fuck.” Liam rubbed his temple with his free hand.

“Thought’d you be happy about that? Was a good punch and all.”

“He’s gonna kill me.”

“Nah, he’ll probably be too scared of you now.” Niall flashed him a hopeful smile that Liam found rather comforting. He laughed slightly.

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” He replied sarcastically.

“Can I help you clean up?” Liam was taken aback slightly.

“Er, I mean, why would you want to?”

“I just feel really bad about what happened. Especially when your brother got hit. Twat deserved to get punched.” He paused. “I’m just really sorry and I wanna make it up to you.”  
“You don’t have to. Honestly it’s fine.” Both Niall and Liam knew it wasn’t, but he tried to wave him off anyway.

“Come on. It’ll take forever to do this all yourself.” Without waiting for Liam’s reply, the other boy began ascending the ladder, resuming where Liam had left off. Liam smiled, feeling his stomach go all warm.

“I better go get another sponge then.” Liam thought out loud. He was met with a big grin from the Irish lad, causing him to smile back as he wandered inside the house again. He place Kyle’s bucket at the bottom of the stairs, feeling quite satisfied at how the night turned out. He was rather looking forward to cleaning the house now; now it meant he could spend time with Niall.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. This is for theme 6 of the NiamNetwork: Halloween. Now, Halloween is nowhere near as big in England as it seems to be in the States. I have been trick-or-treating twice, but you have to be careful about the houses you pick. You rarely get houses that take part in it, so they'll either ignore it, or answer the door angrily or something. Honestly, we turn all the lights off at the front of our house and just pretend we're not in, because we don't wanna get egged again lmao. Anyway, so I struggled to find much to write as Halloween is just another excuse to get drunk in England really, so I don't know how happy I am with this. Let me know what you think and make sure to check out the NiamNetwork on Tumblr for works wayyyyyy better than this one! :)  
> Thanks again!


End file.
